At least you finish the game. Davis did fine against Tulsa

The Mercer game was a learning experience, and the lesson should be don’t take night games in the South in August. They had only a five hour window to get the game in, and apparently that wasn’t considered prior to the rain delay.

The Stetson game was scheduled before Sac left the Big Sky. I think they would have to pay Stetson to get out of that game.
Sac may identify as an FBS independent but that is aspirational. I guess the NCAA can revisit, but nothing has changed.

The Sac media teams release refers to a computer rating as a poll.
I know its common to call them polls, but that obscures an important distinction.. Sac is 19th as rated by their performance in scoring and yielding points, the location of the games, and strength of schedule. Davis is ninth. These ratings basically look backward to estimate what rating would explain the team’s results against its schedule
The polls on the otherhand are subjective opinions, by people that don’t have a common idea of what they are voting for. Are they rewarding accomplishment or predicting future results? Different voters would answer differently.
Davis emphasizing their injuries is reflected by the polls, the computer doesn’t factor that in.

Davis is simply responding to the reality that if Sac isn’t part of the conference they are just another team. I’d personally prefer that Davis schedule one beatable FBS team, which is what Sac aspires to be, and skip the P4 games but there are other priorities, like payout and exposure in other markets. A home and home would help finance Sac more than it helps Davis because Sac has more seats. Davis isn’t obligated to make Sac’s schedule more attractive.

Sac isn’t ranked in the polls. They are 19 in Massey rating. Its conceivable Sac will be ranked by the Commitee, but only if they beat Davis.

I think the Big Sky’s statement of “incorrect judgement” applied indicates that the officials had a good enough view to have made the correct call.
Even the former Sac State coach doing the color on the broadcast questioned whether the right foot was down out of bounds.
The call was internally inconsistent, they said he was in bounds based on his upper body landing in bounds, but then stopped the clock because he got out of bounds.

DB pulled receivers upper body back onto the field. That made a routine call something to think about.

The Committee doesn't vote the rankings published this week.
There are a bunch of two loss teams, and voters are swayed by record. I think all the publicity about injuries is swaying voters.

There are reasons to be both optimistic and pessimistic about transfers and recruits, we’ll have to see how that works out. All FCS teams, and Mountain West teams are going to lose players to transfers. Idaho is an example where they were confident that they could continue to lose talent year after year but it caught up to them.
Davis had 17 three star recruits in 2025 in CA Forever’s list, Some of those guys may have been over rated, but some haven’t had a chance or were injured, we don’t know why many of those guys never saw the field, The best way to prepare for losing players is to build depth. Davis only felt they had 55 players they felt worth taking to Bozeman.

Regarding players who may burn a year by playing in the next game or the next two games, freshmen who have played in 3 or 4 games so far are Cory McEnroe, Brayden Ross, and Mason Walsh. Cory and Brayden have appeared in 4 games, Walsh 3. These guys have played on special teams, but in addition Cory appears on the depth chart behind Rutchena.

You must be right or else he'd be listed on the depth chart of this weeks game

He did! First game since Cal Poly.
After hearing all through the oreseason that Davis was returning all offensive line starters, idaho was only the second game that they all played.

Early in the season they just listed everyone on the D line
Ike Ikegbu made an appearance against Idaho

He broke his forearm while playing with a broken hand.

Hard to speculate about causes of injuries.
We know about 8 of the 15 season ending injuries. Williams, Nava, Perez, Vargas, Garretson, P.Connors.R.Connors, Bell. About half the injuries either took place in camp, practice, or were unnoticed in the game.

Beyond the guys who are out for the season in the secondary they have had a lot of guys who have been unavailable for games, e.g. Ty Richardson and Trey Carr. Classic depth chart a few games ago has Josiah Allen starting at one secondary position and backing up three more.

Notable that Davis beat two of those teams during their streaks, including a top 4 team on the list.

Montana State has so many blowouts that they develop depth, so they are not playing banged up or exhausted guys.
Davis plays their primary players for more snaps, doesn’t develop depth.
But there were players injured in practice even before the season started.

There are injuries that have never been mentioned.
Hard to tell if a reserve doesn’t play due to coaches decision or injury.

Team has 15 players out for the year according to Plough have to guess on some of them
Reported Injured Totton, Perez, Bell, Razor.
Suspect injured Cravin, Albert Richardson
Still out from last year Carillo.

On the positive side, we have the entire starting defense minus the Connor twins.and entire starting offense except for Nava and Williams.